RFA-FD-08-003 Abstract-MCBIOS Conference Support The MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS) was founded in 2003 with the goal of bringing together researchers and students from throughout the mid-south region to promote research at the interface of biology and computation. MCBIOS has held seven annual conferences to date. The conference has been successful in attracting a strong group of participants, including educators, researchers and students as part of our goal to foster networking and collaboration among our members. An important aspect of the MCBIOS mission is to support, encourage and mentor our student members. This proposal requests funds of $10,000 per year for five years to help offset travel and accommodation costs for student participants, to provide increased participation opportunities and activities for students who attend the conference, and to recruit high quality keynote speakers and workshop presentations.